Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam – A Year In Review (2016-2017)

Well, it has certainly been quite a year for the Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam!
For those unaware, the Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam is a volunteer run group of primarily students, that organises free. monthly events for young people and adults in Northern Ireland interested in technology.
This year, we formally defined the purpose of the group and its activities as

“The purpose of the Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam is to further the advancement of education of both young people and adults across Northern Ireland in the field of Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, Maths, Physics and related subjects. This is achieved through family friendly events for the public (Raspberry Jams), 1 to 1 mentoring for young people and programmes for educators including school teachers and parents.”

The Year in Numbers

This past year (July 2016 – June 2017), as a team we have

Been involved in 15 events across the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

Volunteer team have wired up well over 10,000m of cabling in total and built up a stock of well over 1,500m of different cables.

Moved from our single room at Farset Labs, to the Queens University Maths and Physics Teaching Centre. By the June 2017 Jam, we ran Pis set up in 4 different rooms, running with x80 Raspberry Pis and x9 workshops.

Met 1 astronaut!

Highlights of the year

As a team, we agree it has certainly been a fantastic year. Alongside our x10 normal Jams (September-June), we also took part in a number of other special events. Below are a few of these highlights.

Dublin Maker – July 2016

Fantastic group of volunteers for Dublin Maker!

The main Jam team, plus a few awesome Jam attendees headed down to Dublin on the 23rd July 2016. Throughout the day, they interacted with over 1800 people with 1400+ DOTs boards filled in by attendees.

The team were swamped the entire event, with a number of occasions there being sizeable queues. That was even with us having one of the largest stalls (a triple stall) of the day. Our youngest attendee taking part was 2, while our oldest was 80+.

In October, the W5 education team invited a small group of the Jam team down to W5 for the day to help out with the Destination Space event, which British Astronaut Tim Peake was attending. The event was attended by 150+ school children from across Northern Ireland. The team ran the DOTs board activity, using the secret rocket Easter Egg, along with getting kids exploring the Sense HATs.

At the end, Hannah and Alex got a great conversation with Tim on the Astro Pi project and how he had used it while on the International Space Station.

The Move – February 2017

The new home for the Northern Ireland Raspberry Jams

In February, after 6+ months of planning/discussion with the Queens University School of Mathematics and Physics , we moved the main venue of the Northern Ireland Raspberry Jam from the awesome Farset Labs, over to the much larger Queens University Maths and Physics Teaching Centre.

Some of the team braving the February weather on parking duty

The new venue includes x2 fully kitted out IT labs with x70 machines, x3 classrooms (2 of which we set up as small Pi rooms each month) and x2 lecture theatres, along with a large open foyer area for the break. Beyond a few initial cabling hiccups, we still somehow managed to pull off a successful pilot event, enough that the university allowed us to stick around. Since April 2017, we have been able to offer 100+ tickets for each Jam thanks to the much larger venue.

The new venue has also allowed us the space to run “lightning talks” in the break. These 7 minute so far have ranged from the Rosetta Mission, to how Cloud Chambers work to how to build your own Rubiks cube solving robot! This is something we plan to greatly expand in the coming year.

The first pilot Jam in February 2017 at the new venue

The Northern Ireland Science Festival special Jam

The junior volunteers ran their first workshop with a little help from Aoibheann.

For the first time, we ran 2 Raspberry Jams in the space of 1 month. The extra Jam was a special Jam as part of the Northern Ireland Science Festival. It was a fantastic opportunity for us to meet new people, brought in via help with marketing from the Science Festival team.

Having far too much fun with Sonic Pi at the Science Festival Jam

Coderdojo Coolest Projects – June 2017

The final event for the team of the year, was Coderdojo Coolest Projects which took place on the 17th June, 2017 down in Dublin. The team had well over 700 DOTs boards completed by the Ninjas and parents, with feedback being fantastic as usual. The team were inundated all day, with rather long queues commonplace for their stall.

The Team

The team in April 2017

The team this year has grown significantly, from 8 volunteers in June 2016, to now over 20! A core principle of the Jam has been not only providing opportunities for the attendees, but also to invest in the volunteer team. A majority of the team are 18 or under, with our youngest being 14. These young folk have given up a combined total of well over 1500 hours of their time to make these events happen. When you consider that number, 1500 hours, that is a colossal number for a bunch of young folk who have completely different interests and passions, yet share a passion for inspiring other young folk in the fields of Maths, Physics, Computer Science and Electronic Engineering.

A few have admitted that being involved with the Raspberry Jam has immensely boosted their confidence in public speaking and engagement, while also completely changing what they want to do in the future towards STEM subjects!

To Conclude

It has been one heck of a year! For a group started almost by mistake 3 years ago, to have come on this far and be engaging with 5000+ people in the space of 12 months, while giving up over 1500 hours of their time for free all run off a shoestring budget, is quite something.

I am extremely proud and honoured to get to work with such a talented bunch of young folk to provide opportunities for tomorrows Makers, Inventors and Tinkerers to learn and thrive in a safe and fun environment here in Northern Ireland.None of this would be possible without them.